Kathryn Millard

Kathryn Millard is an essayist, filmmaker and dramaturg. Psychology, mental health, popular fallacies, and the afterlife of images are recurring themes in her body of work which spans award-winning feature dramas, documentaries and hybrid works. Kathryn's films have been selected for dozens of major festivals including Chicago, São Paulo, Mill Valley, Pordenone, Astra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and have screened at the Brooklyn Art Museum and on the Sundance Channel. As writer, producer and director, Kathryn's major credits include: Shock Room (2015); Random 8 (2012); The Boot Cake (2008); Travelling Light (2003); Parklands (1996) and LightYears (1991).

Critics have described Kathryn's films as 'emotional detective stories' and the filmmaker as someone who 'thrives on the thrill of investigation'. Shock Room, which challenged Stanley Milgram's controversial Obedience experiments, won 'Best Australian Feature Film' at the 2015 Antennae Documentary Festival. The jury wrote: "Kathryn Millard's excellent direction of dramatic re-enactments drew us into the many uncomfortable scenes that put us in the position to ponder—when would we stand up and just say NO!" (Alan Berliner, Tracey Moffat, Susan McKinnon).

Kathryn is Professor of Screen at Sydney's Macquarie University. Her book of essays, Screenwriting in a Digital Era (Palgrave, 2014), was described by critic Adrian Martin as 'brilliant … the first truly international survey to look beyond Hollywood for its rich and varied inspiration'. It is being re-issued in 2016.

"I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, a city on the edge of the desert. My father was a police detective—and there is a bit of the detective in me. I chase images through archives. Stage investigations with actors. Hit the road as and when necessary. My films are influenced by everything from Italian neo-realism and silent cinema to psychology experiments and simulations. I think of my recent films as social dramas, and see them as a logical progression from the ensemble features and documentaries about communities that I made earlier in my filmmaking career." Kathryn Millard